War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) (39 page)

“I was busy hiding from one of the zombies you were supposed to have moved into the lobby,” she snapped right back. She wasn’t easily cornered but when it happened her claws came out.

Von Braun’s grin widened. Once he got his cure, he would kill this girl and eat her. He was going enjoy ripping her open. Without realizing it he stepped into the elevator where she had her back to the wall. “Get out!” She held up the opened bottle. “I’ll throw it, I swear.”

“No you won’t.”

“And you won’t attack me,” she said, forcefully. “So back off. I need you to go down stairs to the lobby. It’s time to release the zombies on the police. Do you understand?”

His black eyes gleamed. “Yeah, it’s time for a pig roast.” The idea excited him and wearing an evil grin, he left her, and headed for the stairs.

“Thank God,” she said again and hurried through the cafeteria to the kitchen where she stood in front of the six ovens. In the dark, without their usual gleam, they seemed old and dead. But they weren’t, not yet at least.

Anna went to each, checking for the little blue flame that would indicate a burning pilot light. They were all dark. She tried to start one of the burners, without success, but she could hear the hiss of gas; it was surprisingly loud. “Alright, alright,” she said as she dialed all thirty-six burners to high. The smell of the gas was immediate and overpowering.

Now, she was stuck with the dilemma of how to start the fire without blowing herself up in the process. A number of labor intensive and farfetched ideas came to her: a fuse made out of
Wesson
oil soaked sheets that she could run all the way from the first floor, a flaming zombie, enticed to wander up the stairs using strategically placed cell phones to draw him on. She discarded these ridiculous ideas and decided to use a primitive drone: the elevator.

She took the elevator down to the second floor where, after a quick search of the nurse’s station, she found a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a lighter that was stashed in one of the desk drawers and a heavy sweater—everything needed to start a fire.

“Now all I need is that dumb fuck, Von Braun to come through.” She went to a window that faced the front and saw that the entire lawn of the facility was covered in people…zombies, actually. They were everywhere. There must have been two-hundred of them. They milled around for about ten minutes and then suddenly the
pop, pop, pop
of gunfire reached her ears. Coming through the glass it was a soft sound. Outside it was loud enough to attract every single zombie. As one, they began marching through the gates.

The gunfire picked up and Anna felt a stab of queasiness. People were going to die, hell, they could already be dying and it was all her fault. She could blame Thuy, but deep down she knew better. She was trading the very likely chance of her going to prison for all the lives that were going to end that night.

“They made me do it,” she said, trying to convince herself. “They set this all in…” The smell of gas caused her to stop her blame shifting. It was just a whiff, still it was shocking how quickly the air in the building was being infused.

“I better hurry,” she whispered, heading for the elevator with her little bundle under one arm. She took the elevator down one floor and again paused to see if there were any stray zombies. There were two of them. Fortunately for Anna they had their faces pressed against the glass and were staring out at what was beginning to sound like a major battle going on beyond the gates.

With little choice, she turned her back on them. She piled the heavy sweater into an ugly pyramid and then doused it with the alcohol. Then she reached up and pressed the button for the third floor and as the doors were closing she lit the sweater. It blazed merrily and then the door closed and she was running to get out of the building before it was too late.

Two minutes earlier, Stephanie was sitting in the hall with Chuck, lazing her head upon his broad shoulder, trying not to think about the drumbeat from hell that the zombies had kept up all this time or that the central stair door was a millimeter from losing another hinge. She had kicked all this out of her mind and was simply breathing in this man with whom she had found such a connection to, when she smelled the gas.

After being confronted with her looming death for so long, alarm over the smell was not her initial reaction. Curiosity was. “Do you smell that?” she asked Chuck. “It smells like gas.”

“It wasn’t me, I swear,” he drawled out, grinning at her.

She shoved him, unable to help her own smile. “No, I mean it. I smell gas. Should we be worried?”

He took a big sniff. “Well, hell, I smell it, too. Maybe it's nothin' but to be on the safe side, I should mention it to Dr. Lee.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Stephanie said, getting up. “I’m feeling much better.” She’d been sitting for the last few hours and had regained much of her strength. With barely a cough, she walked down to the central door where most of the scientists were sitting. They had given up hope and for the most part they were doing little besides waiting for the zombies to break through.

“Excuse me, Dr. Lee,” Steph said, coming to squat close to where Thuy and Deckard were sitting. She felt bad for interrupting them. They’d been holding hands, but now Thuy quickly pulled her soft ones from his callused paws.

“Yes?”

“There’s a gas smell down the hall. You know, like natural gas. That sort of thing. I thought you should know.” 

Thuy’s brows came down as she gave a tentative sniff to the air. “You can smell it from down there? That doesn’t make any sense.” She jumped up and hurried down the hall toward Chuck. Over her shoulder, she asked, “Deck, can you check the control room? If there’s a leak, it would be coming from there, not down…”

She stopped, struck by an urgent feeling of déjà vu. A memory was shifting in her mind, trying to come to the surface: it was the first time she’d come to the Walton facility. She’d been standing pretty much right where she was now, staring about at her half completed lab and wondering how all the work was going to get done on time. Then Deckard had come in. He had stood right where he was standing now…but he hadn’t remained there. He had walked past her and right around the hole in the floor where he could see right down into the cafeteria.

“The kitchens are down there,” she said to herself. Gas could only be coming from two sources: the huge industrial sized kitchen ovens below her, or from the lines Thuy had pulled out from the walls—except the lines were shut off. “Von Braun,” she hissed. It had to be him behind the gas leak, which meant… “Chuck! Get over here. Everyone move to the south end of the building. I think Von Braun is up to something with the gas.”

Stephanie watched Chuck slowly get to his feet. Nonchalantly he put his fists into the small of his back and stretched. “Damn it, Chuck!" she screamed. "Stop playing it cool!”

A heavy hand grabbed her arm. It was Dr. Wilson, sweat lining his brown face. “Come on, Ms. Glowitz. We can’t wait on him.” The smell of gas was heavy in the air. The scientists started to run and Wilson ran with them, pulling Stephanie along with him.

Thuy counted them as they ran past. “Twenty-one…who are we missing?”

“Riggs and Milner,” Deck said. “They’re down in the last lab.” Thuy started running. In her mind, she saw herself running down there, getting them and running back, no problem. She made it three feet before she was pulled up short by Deckard. “Don’t be stupid,” he growled in her ear.

He had her by the arm with one hand and in the other he had his cell. It took two second to find Riggs’ number. “This is Deckard. You and Milner have to get out of there.”

“Did the zombies get through?” Riggs asked. He was already hurrying for the door.

“No. There’s a gas leak,” Deck yelled into the phone. “We think it’s been intentionally set. Grab Milner and get down to this end of the building, quick.” After a second as he felt a strange fear ripple the air, he added, “You better run.”

Deckard thumbed the
off
button and looked up. Chuck was just passing the elevator and glanced at it—he thought he’d heard the machinery going. Riggs and Milner came fast walking around the corner at the far end of the hall. On the floor below, the elevator, with the sweater burning and puffing out black smoke, let out a pleasant
ding!
The doors opened about a foot and a half, just far enough to allow the methane to come swirling in.

A fraction of a second later the gas exploded with an indescribably, deafening roar and a shock of light. In a blink it turned night into day for miles around. Every window on the third floor blew out, sending shards zipping through the air for hundreds of yards.

The explosion rocked the building, shaking the floors and cracking the support structure in a hundred places. Water pipes burst sending thousands of gallons water cascading through the interior walls to flood the basement. As a crescendo the glass walls of the labs came crashing down in a noise like raining thunder.

One second, Thuy was looking at Riggs and screaming for him to run and in the next she was knocked off her feet. She slapped up hard against the linoleum. With her cheek pressed to the floor she was in a perfect position to see the hall undulate like a low wave, like water. Then her vision was filled with clear crystals and sharp glass so that it seemed like she was looking at the world through a kaleidoscope.

Then something heavy covered her and a large hand hid her face from the flying glass. It was Deckard. He had thrown himself across her. Glass cut him in so many places he could barely feel all the wounds. They didn’t matter to him. They were nicks only. What mattered to him, he realized, was not himself but Thuy.

“Are you ok?” he asked Thuy. “Are you hurt?”

He was shouting, but he came across in a mumble as her ears rang from the explosion. “I’m ok, I think.” In truth she was numb and couldn’t feel anything, good or bad. “How’s Riggs?” she asked. “Is he ok?”

Deckard wasn’t nearly so numb; there was a slashing pain  running up and down his back, but what stung worse was that she would ask about Riggs first. He squinted through the grey pall that was gradually overcoming the clean air. Halfway down the hall, Chuck was on his hands and knees, spitting blood onto the rubble and glass strewn floor.

Further down, Riggs was just getting to his feet, while next to him Milner was screaming and holding his hands to his face. Deckard turned to look down the other end of the hall, Burke was climbing out from beneath a clump of skinny scientists—if asked he’d say they fell over on top of him. A few feet away from John, Wilson was helping Stephanie to her feet.

“Riggs looks ok,” Deck answered, and then worked his jaw around on its hinges. His head felt plugged with sawdust.

“You’re bleeding,” Thuy noted, seeing all the blood on his face.

“Probably,” he said with a shrug. He winced at the move, something Thuy also noticed. She began to inspect him closely, and he felt like a chimp being groomed, right up until she pulled something that seemed to be made of fire out of his shoulder.

“Son of a…” he seethed through gritted teeth. She shrugged and held up a bloody shard of glass the size of her hand that had been stuck in his back. She tried to hand it to him as though he might want to keep it as a souvenir. “No thanks,” he said. “I’ve got one just like it at home.”

Chuck came up then. “You know y’alls bleedin'?”

“You, too,” Deck answered. They both were running red from a hundred tiny cuts and a few larger ones as well.

Thuy looked past Chuck. “Oh no, Milner!” Milner was being helped along by Riggs. Milner had one hand thrown out questing blindly for a wall that had basically disintegrated, while the other sat across his eyes and, from beneath his palm, blood ran wet. Thuy turned to the others. “Wilson? Dr. Wilson, we need you.” She heard the fear in her own voice. “Quickly!”

Grimacing, Deck got to his feet, just as Milner’s flailing hand finally struck something solid: the central stairwell door. It swung back on its broken hinges with a groan. “Riggs!” Milner cried in a panic. Even blind he knew the touch of the door and it didn’t take a genius to guess that the danger from the zombies hadn’t ended with the explosion.

Riggs had been moving in a daze but as he glanced at the open door he cried, “Oh God!” Before he could react, zombies rushed up from the stairs. Milner was closest and there were three of the black-eyed creatures on him before he knew it. Riggs tried to kick them off his friend, however two more came through the stairwell door and latched onto him, sinking their teeth into him, one at the shoulder, another on his arm.

Chuck and Deckard pulled their surgical masks over their noses and ran to help, while everyone else hung back. Chuck had a spear made from a broom handle with which he stabbed down into one of the zombies chewing on Riggs. The point went four inches deep, slipping between ribs to puncture a lung—the zombie continued ripping into Riggs’ shoulder as if nothing had happened.

Deckard had his pistol with its twelve bullets. He brought it up to shoot one of Milner’s attackers, but a movement to his left attracted his attention—there were more zombies coming up out of the stairwell. Some were whole and strong, like Rory Vickers, who was the color of old oatmeal and had black goo in his eyes and mouth and up under his hair, but otherwise looked like his old self. It took three shots to the chest to drop him.

Some of the zombies were downright horrifying.

Sergeant Heines had most of his skin burned away and what was left was charred black and hanging in strips. He was gruesome and smelled so bad it turned Deckard’s stomach. A strange pity awoke in Deckard, which ended up saving him…for the moment. He shot Heines in the head, hoping to kill any thinking part of him that was left and was happily surprised to see the zombie fall straight over from the single bullet.

“Go for the brain!” he shouted to Chuck. The Okie had been stabbing over and over again into the back of the zombie, slowing it down but not killing it. Now, he aimed for the back of the head. The spear broke but not before sending a killing shard into the thing’s brain.

While Deckard made head shot after head shot at the zombies coming up out of the stairwell, Chuck used half a spear to kill the second zombie that was on Riggs. He stepped on the thing’s head with one shit-kicking boot to hold it still and then drove the shaft right into its eyes socket.

Riggs rolled out from beneath the corpse and then kicked away from the zombies eating Milner who was still very much alive.

Chuck raised his hand to the others showing his broken spear. Only Thuy seemed to understand. Chuck would continue to fight but he needed a new weapon. Thuy yelled, “Eng! Wilson, come on, don’t just stand there. Burke, you're immune, damn it. Go help."

None of the three were eager to go into battle. Eng went first, carrying Thuy’s desk chair as a combination weapon and shield. He used it to pin one of the zombies down. Burk and Wilson came next with makeshift spears; they went for the eyes.

In short order the zombies attacking Milner were dead. The scientist just laid there and cried blood; he wasn’t going to make it. Even without the Com-cells busy replicating in his system, he wasn’t going to last so grievous were his injuries; the floor was slick with his blood.

Deckard shot down the last of the zombies coming from the stairs. He went to check his ammo, but the slide was back; the gun was empty. “Huh,” he said and then showed Chuck.

“Close,” Chuck said. He then began coughing and backing away from the stairs. They all did. A heavy black smoke broiled up out of the stairwell and the air was shimmering with heat.

“What do we do about Dr. Milner?” one of the scientists asked. Milner was trying to move away from the stairwell door, but one of his arms was dislocated and the other ended at a mangled and bleeding stump.

“We don’t do anything!” Riggs spat. “We let him die. The smoke is a blessing for him…and for me.” He started for the stairwell door, but after a quick look from Thuy, Deckard grabbed him and shoved him back.

“Not yet, Riggs,” Deckard said, wondering why Thuy wouldn’t let him end himself before he became a danger. “You have lots of time left.”

Riggs cackled, madly. “I have all the time in the world. It’s you who’s out of time. Can’t you feel it?” He knelt down and put his hands on the floor. Blood trickled down from the bite on his shoulder to pool around his hand. “You can feel the heat through the floor. You can feel the building dying.”

Everyone but Thuy knelt and touched the floor. Riggs wasn’t lying. Burke was the first to stand. He went as close to the stairwell as he could, his face twisted from the heat. With a curse, he turned away. “It’s clear of them zombies. I says we kin wet down all our clothes and make a run for it.”

Deckard rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the idea. Thuy was more circumspect. “The heat will shrivel your lungs in seconds. You will die. But…but maybe it doesn’t matter. We're trapped. I think we’re all going to die here very quickly.”

As if to prove her wrong, the elevator took that moment to
ding!
Freed from the key that had kept it penned on the first floor, its tiny electronic brain had gone through its floor sequence and ended up on the fourth floor.